Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Among the heart of the team’s order, only Alex Gordon is performing up to expectations, with a reasonable .294/.329/.441 slash line and a 114 OPS+. Billy Butler has one extra-base hit, Eric Hosmer has four, and neither has hit a home run. Salvador Perez is batting .095 in his last 10 games. Mike Moustakas has a .492 OPS.

The picture is not pretty. The power outage is the reason behind the team’s 9-9 start, general manager Dayton Moore believes. But it also sustains his belief in his team’s talent.

We’ll let him explain, as he did in a telephone conversation on Tuesday morning.

“Of course, it’s been a little frustrating,” Moore said. “It’s frustrating for the players. But nobody’s I would say concerned. We’re not really panicking.”

He added, “If your offense is clicking and your rotation is clicking and your bullpen is clicking, you’ll win 20 of 30 games. You play .500 because there’s a phase of your team that is not performing well. It may be starting pitching. It may be defense. It may be hitting . . .

“Right now, we’re playing .500 baseball, and we’re not producing. We’re not slugging, and we’re not getting our timely hits enough. You’ve got to expect that to change. Hitting is the one part of the game that over the course of the season takes care of itself, so to speak.

“If the defense is good, it usually will stay good. If the rotation is good, it usually will stay good, assuming everybody stays healthy. But the offense is one of those things that goes through ups and downs. Hitting is the most difficult thing to do well in all of sports, in my opinion.

“Again, if your team is producing in all phases of the game, you have a great month. If your team is not producing offensively, or in the starting rotation, if you have a good team, you’re playing about .500. If you have a bad team, you’re well below.

“We are where right now because of how we’ve performed offensively. I’m not disappointed. And I’m not really concerned.”

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“If the defense is good, it usually will stay good. If the rotation is good, it usually will stay good, assuming everybody stays healthy. But the offense is one of those things that goes through ups and downs.

I'd be surprised if scoring was any more variable than runs allowed (kinda by definition). I suppose since pitching is only part of the variation in RA, it is by definition less variable than hitting but then this becomes a silly statement along the lines of "the part of the game that accounts for about 20% and the part of the game that accounts for about 30% vary less in absolute terms than the part of the game that accounts for 50%." Of course maybe Dayton thinks the game is 2/3 pitching and defense.

Based on his age 20-21 performance and his age 22 ZiPS projection (the best hitter of all the 22 year olds as I recall -- which were a strong bunch that year), I thought Hosmer was gonna be something. Now I'm starting to think he's the Royals' Ike Davis (less power, better BA).

I'm not convinced we should expect the Royals offense to get substantially better. Yes, Perez, Hosmer and Butler are under-performing but Infante (111 OPS+), Escobar (124) and probably Cain (109) are over-performing. This year they are at 3.5 R/G and an 84 OPS+; last year those numbers were 89 and 4. Infante is an excellent bet to out-produce last year's 2B (so am I) but otherwise it's the same old. I will also venture a guess that Jason Vargas will not carry a 331 ERA+ throughout the year.

Shocked that Cashman hasn't been removed. Whoops, I forgot, even though he has 17 years of drafting and developing nothing, he spends vast sums of available Cash like an expert wizard GM. Cashman, the cash man.

Run scoring is always down early in the year, isn't it? Cold weather, pitchers ahead of hitters, etc. The hitting has been worse than the low expectations you would have for the Royals, but the pitching has been even better, and is due to regress. So things will even out. This is probably a .500 team.

boy, even tho he's mostly been off to a slow start, wouldn't it be nice to have wil myers around? technically i understand what they were doing in getting BIG LAME JAMES to come in and be the "ace" of a staff that they figured might lead them to a playoff berth (especially in this epoch of the mandatory-game-163/2-wild-card-teams) but when you've got hosmer and moustakas and myers as your big three offensive players and you give away dale murphy reincarnate to get a SP who's going to be the ace of a ~70something win team for the next 3-5 years or whatever? idk.... but then again i always thought the brewers would rue the day they gave up on brett lawrie as well, although turning around and getting aramis ramirez was a cromulent move for that offense.

“Right now, we’re playing .500 baseball, and we’re not producing. We’re not slugging, and we’re not getting our timely hits enough. You’ve got to expect that to change. Hitting is the one part of the game that over the course of the season takes care of itself, so to speak.